Fishselect – a New Method for Predicting Size Selectivity of Fishing Gears

Determining size selective properties of fishing gears is important for fisheries management. The development of the selective properties of fishing gears towards desired species or multispecies specific size selectively is a widely used approach to achieve sustainable fisheries. Traditionally, the estimation and optimization of the size selective properties of fishing gears have been carried out following a kind of trial and error procedure. However, conducting sea trials is expensive and time consuming, which makes this optimization difficult solely based on such an approach.

FISHSELECT has in recent years supplemented the purely experimental-based selectivity assessment methods with guidelines and predictions of selectivity that reduce the amount of trials necessary to develop a suitable gear design for a given fishery. In addition, FISHSELECT can help interpreting results obtained from experimental fishing, leading to a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of size selectivity in fishing gears.

Fish morphology and mesh geometry play an important role for size selectivity in fishing gear. Thus, the FISHSELECT methodology is based on a combination of laboratory experiments and computer simulations which involves assessment of the fish morphology relevant for size selectivity. We present the method and a number of different case studies where it has been applied.